³President Bush and the Republicans expect a stinging defeat
in November, but they're betting the terror card saves them
from an electoral debacle.²
The Republicans can take heart! See:
³Cheney won't rule out terror strike²
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=1669&lists=newslog
rkm
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Original source URL:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15441251.htm
Posted on Tue, Sep. 05, 2006
Bush, GOP hoping terror card can save them from election drubbing
By Thomas M. DeFrank
New York Daily News
(MCT)
WASHINGTON - President Bush and the Republicans expect a stinging defeat in
November, but they're betting the terror card saves them from an electoral
debacle.
"The security issue trumps everything," a senior Bush official said last week.
"That's why even though they're really mad at us, in the end they're going to
give us another two years."
Nevertheless, many other senior Bush loyalists privately believe anti-Iraq and
anti-Bush sentiment will cost the Republicans the House nine weeks from today, a
doomsday scenario that would cripple Bush for his final two years in office.
"We'll lose the House," one of the party's most prominent officials flatly
predicted, "and the president will be dead in the water for two years."
Even a perennially optimistic senior Bush strategist conceded, "I'm pretty
worried about it. The House is not looking good."
The Democrats need a net gain of six seats in the Senate or 15 in the House to
gain control of one chamber. Barring a huge national wave of Bush-backlash, the
GOP is widely expected to lose seats but hang on to its slim majority in the
Senate.
The House - which was thought to be impregnable until Iraq, immigration and
Hurricane Katrina sent Bush's approval ratings into a tailspin - is "very much
in play and very much in flux," according to a White House number-cruncher.
"This cake is baked," predicted Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook
Political Report newsletter. "You just don't have a wave of this magnitude and
not see 15 seats turn over."
The best-case scenario offered by several White House and Republican Party
optimists projects losing three Senate seats and eight to 10 House races. That
would diminish Bush's legislative clout, but keep the GOP in control.
If the election were held today, a top analyst closely allied with the White
House said, the Republicans would lose at least 20 seats, more than enough to
make Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California speaker of the House and New York's Charles
Rangel chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which controls billions in
government spending. A key Bush official called those prospects "suicidal for
the country" - a theme Republicans will trumpet throughout the campaign.
Bush's handlers acknowledge he's an unpopular president whose leadership
credentials have been shattered in the last year, even though his poll approval
ratings have ticked back into the low 40s from their lows in the 30s.
Americans have "decided the personal characteristics that kept him afloat for a
long time aren't that appealing anymore," an influential Bushie told the New
York Daily News. "They also think Iraq is a failure."
But Bush political guru Karl Rove believes a massive GOP counteroffensive begun
last week re-emphasizing the terror threat and linking the war in Iraq to
keeping America safe will carry the day.
Bush planners also believe Republicans have a superior "ground game" that will
prove more effective in identifying and turning out their vote than the
Democrats.
"We enjoy a severalfold strategic advantage on the ground," said a confident top
Bush strategist. "A well-executed mediocre plan will beat a poorly executed
brilliant plan every day."
---
© 2006, New York Daily News.
Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
© 2006 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.mercurynews.com
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